Back Again

I've started and re-started this blog a number of times (but who's counting?).  Spring seems to be a good start time and then I let myself get pulled away again.  Persistence can be a problem for me.

But I've found that -- like forgiveness -- writing can be something we have to offer again and again. Someone asked me today, "Do you have a blog?" and I thought . . . umm, not exactly.  But perhaps I still do.

My sweetie is coming home today after almost two weeks out of state.  The rain -- wanted or not, light or heavy -- is coming back.  And a dear friend who's been without a home for too long, found a home yesterday.  These are my celebrations and my joy.  May yours spring up freshly for you!

A Friday Called Good

I spent three hours this afternoon -- the time between noon and three, said to be the hours Jesus hung on the cross -- at my church,  St. David of Wales.  We held a "Seven Last Words" service, in which seven different preachers -- some priests or ministers, a few lay people -- shared meditations on Jesus' seven final utterances from the cross.  The homilies were interspersed with silence, a few hymns sung by the congregation, and deeply moving music played by wonderful musicians.

After each piece of music, each meditation, I had a sense of settling back into the silence with such gratitude.  It is an amazing gift to have more than a few minutes to steep oneself in something true -- to ponder it, to wonder, even to sorrow.  Lord knows that in this busy world we greatly need space to open and hold our thoughts and our hearts.  Give yourself that gift when you can.

Lost, Lost, and Something Other

Last week I had the wrenching experience of discovering that my bird feeders were infected with salmonella; at least four pine siskins and one lesser goldfinch were clearly ill and seemed to be dying.  I took down all the feeders, cleaned and stored them away, scrubbed the patio down with a bleach & water solution -- and wept.

I have grieved ever since -- that my feeders became the source of death; that for several days birds visited empty space and fluttered away, confused; that now they no longer visit at all.  I cannot forget one last ailing bird that flew to the front window and clung to the window frame for hours that evening, gazing in, gazing, waiting.  I sat inside reading but kept looking up.  He would still be there, clinging to the edge.  Before dark fell completely, he was gone.

In obedience to the local experts, I'll wait two weeks before hanging up my clean feeders again -- on Easter Sunday.

May life and health return.

Letter to a Future Self

The man who would become my father-in-law sat down in 1957 to write a letter to himself in his new calling; that letter is still in his files and LeRoy and I were re-reading it yesterday.  Louis Goertz was about to move his young family from Tampa, Kansas to Henderson, Nebraska to serve as pastor to a Mennonite congregation.  The previous years had been one of dedicated study while holding jobs that supported his family (including teaching); at the age of 39, he had finally graduated.  In flowing script, he writes in part:

"Dear Mr. Goertz: At this happy occasion of your graduation I would like to pass on to you some thoughts of encouragement. . . . As you now see it, your place in this world is a place of service.  Humanity needs your love, sympathy, understanding and help. . . .


Let it be your goal to continue teaching: make your family experiences learning experiences; prepare your sermons with an aim to stimulate thought and expect your listeners to learn some truth from each message; endeavor to teach in street conversations, not imposing your opinion upon people, but influencing them, if at all possible, to think nobly and to learn from your dignity, honesty, and Godly reverence.  


There will be times when you will be tempted to relax your efforts and be content with smaller goals.  Remember, '. . . in due season we shall reap if we faint not.'  Go to work courageously.  It is a long time before you will be old enough to retire.


Most sincerely, Louis Goertz"


Louis Goertz "retired" May 2, 2002, having served with nobility and courage all his life.

Just This

I'm drunk with the spring smell of daphne this weekend.  May you experience such delight, too.

Busy-ness and Love

I've been "too busy" to write here, it seems.  Does that sound familiar?

So many of us are so very busy.  And much of that busy-ness arises out of what we truly care about.  We care about doing well (and doing good) in our careers, about the volunteer activities we enter into that create healing and growth in our world, and we care about the fun and relaxation we plan for ourselves and others.  "There just aren't enough hours in the day," we say -- and then we check our smartphones and rush off to the next meeting, the next call, the next task to be checked off.  And we're never done; how often do we finish the day saying, "I had five things on my "must-do" list today and I could only do X many of them" . . . so we add on to the next day's list and go to bed already feeling the burden of tomorrow.

We even rush through or cancel creative activities that we know will feed our souls.  Even our recreation suffers; we work out in a sterile gym instead of going outside, or we take a speedy walk through the park (even though if we stood still and simply listened for a few moments, we'd hear and see some of the creatures who've been hiding while we're bustling through).  And so it goes with our meditations and prayer time; our goal-directed habits resist the call to wait, to just breathe without any agenda.  One of my teachers used to chuckle that he had a minister who would say during the service, "Now let us enter into the silence...." and almost immediately the choir would start singing -- beautifully, softly, but not, you know, silent.  Silence is so alien to us, isn't it?

A dear friend warned me yesterday about getting too busy, and she's so right - but how do I change?  What's the yardstick by which I measure the tasks that can go and those that stay?

This morning I read, "If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing."

What would it mean to simply live from one moment of love to the next?  I don't know, but I'm wondering.  Maybe if we opened ourselves up to that possibility more often, we'd have time to breathe.

Procrastination

I'm way behind on my reading and my papers for class.  So what do I do?  Of course, I check Facebook, I check the news, I look at my friends' blogs.....  I contemplate going for a walk instead of buckling down to the work.  I remember, "Oh, I didn't write in THIS blog yesterday...." and sit down here even though there's not much to say.

Sometimes the time leading up to a task is like circling and circling.  Would that it were like walking a labyrinth, but maybe it's more like being the donkey tied to the grindstone, plodding, plodding.  And -- thank goodness for OTHERS' good writing -- this reminds me of another favorite poem which never fails to bring me joy.  (I always think this is best read aloud slowly):

God’s Grandeur

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

     It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

     It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed.  Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

     And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

     And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

     There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

     Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs –

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

     World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.